The Memphis appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1886-1890, 1887-05-15
4 MIRACLE OF NATURE.
WHAT A DROP OF WATER RE-
VEALED in TEN YEARS.
The Patience OF the Rev. DR.. Dali
niger, the Renowned cold
Catholic" Rewarded.


tent and faithful years, says the Lon.
don Telegraph. His object was to
place and keep under his lens several
varieties OF the minute monads which
are necessarily multiplying by assure
or division and which are nearly al
the bottom of animated nature. The
generations OF these creatures sue
eeed each other about every four
minutes; so that in the course of an
hour he can view the passage of four
teen or fifteen generations. which
would answer to something like 45O
years of human history, while day
of monadic existence would repre-
sent more than 10000 of our years.
These monads live in water. And
by connecting the drop that serves
them for a habitable and roomy
ocean with an ingenious appara-
tus the temperature of this
drop can be either kept CON
slant or raised very slowly
and with absolutely steady precision.
To carry out SO very delicate an in
vestigation, however, it would have
to be prolonged for months and even
years in order to initiate the immense
deliberations with which nature her
self accomplishes every substantial
change in her highest productions.
Night and day, winter and summer,
the patient gaze must be kept fixed
. on those merest specks Of silvery life
which had to be nursed into new
conditions of existence. The slight
est accident to the apparatus might
in one moment render the whole ex-
pertinent void and leave the drop of
water as lifeless as these islands
would be if another glacial period
suddenly arrived. The only reward
On the other hand, for successful and
almost inconceivable perseverance
would be the discovery of truth and
the reinforcement of Darwin's sub
lime generalization. But, for the
sake of these, which always salty the
noble arder of science, DR.. Dal-
linger has given as many years
OF his life as was spent by the Greeks
in the siege of Troy, and has appa-
rently won scientific victory, the
value Of which is as signal as his iu-
genuity and devotion are admirable.
We will endeavor, very briefly, to de-
scribe the method and outcome of
his most remarkable experiments.
The group of microscopic monads
were put under the lens in a we'll
fitted water cell at their usual tenn
perature of co. Fahrenheit, the
apartment, the apparatus and all
around being kept in precise unison.
The doctor then spent the first four
months of his observation ia raising
the temperature time after time BY,
stages less than ne-sixth of a degree
until his swarm of protozoa had
reached the new and advanced read
ing of70o Fahrenheit. The change,
nevertheless, had no more disturbed
them than that experienced by a
British family when it migrates from
London to Cape Town; the life his
tory of each group remained I'M
altered; they moved, gyrated,
fed and split themselves into new
individuals in just the same manner
aud within much the same periods
as before. When, however, three
more degrees had been added to the
seventy, the monads showed signs of
being decidedly Inconvenience.
They were neither as lively nor as
productive as formerly; yet, by keep
ing them exactly at this range during
two quiet months, they regained
their full vigor and might be com
pared to emigrants who had become
seasoned by surviving the first hot
spell in tropical country. They
could now stand, by gradual steps of
increase, the enhanced heat of sew
enty-eight degrees, which was reached
at the commencement of the twelfth
month. Yet here, again, a long
pause was found to be necessary: the
new generations otthose silver specks
OF life under the glass were not all
alike strong enough to live and
thrive. What answers to sunstroke
and fever with w had caused va
cant places to appear in the
water drop, and it was only
when the monads showed themselves
once more lively and prolific by a
long era of repose that the careful
doctor administered further dose
of caloric. During eight years and
half did he thus slowly and uu-
weariedly proceed in the same
course, augmentipg the heat of their
surrounding element now and then
by slow and slight additions, pausing
afterwards for months to give the
minute creatures time to accommo-
date themselves when signs were
visible that they were under diff
culties, and always going forward to
new trials of endurance when they
had recovered. In this manner, after
all those years, DR.. Dallinger brought
has small patients to the astonishing
range of 158 degrees Fahrenheit, at
which the latest generation appeared
"as jolly as sand boys" 1t is not
possibly to say how much further
their tinv constitution could have
been trained to defy increasing
warmth, because the research was at
this point accidentally terminated;
but it will be seen that the doctor
had brought the little people of his
drop world to sustain heat nearly
100 higher than the fourishing point
of their ancestors, and species of
which, if taken at the beginning,
would have been completely and in
simultaneously killed in water of 140o.
When we have added that these
minute salamanders persisted direct
ly they were put back into their an
cestral medium of 65O, it will be man
ifest that the indefatigable doctor
had by the magic of science effected
miracle of nature.
Hot Scotch Did IL.